This will be the kick-off to what is sure to be a long-running series, entitled, “Republicans, the Party of Hypocrisy.” Part 1 starts off with a mild and inconsequential example, that of Elizabeth Lauten, who recently criticized Sasha and Malia Obama for their appearance at the President’s 2014 annual turkey pardoning. Which they, at ages 13 and 16, frankly didn’t seem that excited to be at.
Dear Sasha and Malia: I get you’re both in those awful teen years, but you’re a part of the First Family, try showing a little class. At least respect the part you play,” Lauten wrote in the post. Then again, your mother and father don’t respect their positions very much, or the nation for that matter. So I’m guessing you’re coming up a little short in the ‘good role model’ department.
Lauten issued an apology hours after her original Facebook post yielded a flurry of negative responses, saying that after “many hours of prayer, talking to my parents, and re-reading my words” she could now see how “hurtful” they were.
Then yesterday, it was reported that Lauten was arrested in 2000 for stealing from a Belk department store when she was seventeen. As a first-time offender, she qualified for a deferred prosecution program, and all charges were eventually dismissed.
So, this isn’t a big deal. Lauten initially ran afoul of the unwritten (but pretty clearly understood) rule that you don’t criticize a President’s offspring, especially while they’re still teenagers, and so long as they don’t insert themselves (as Chelsea Clinton clearly has) into political debates. But what I find more amusing is the second part, which is the hypocrisy of the whole thing. And so typically Republican. Remember Larry Craig, the crusading anti-gay United States Senator from Idaho, who didn’t run for re-election after he was caught soliciting an undercover policeman in a men’s restroom at the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport? In any case, one might thing that Luaten would be a little more careful criticizing the Presidential teenagers given her own teenage indiscretions.